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local communities | MIT Center for Civic Media

People in local geographic areas may need help communicating with each other in order to collaborate in building and sustaining healthy communities. Grassroots action at any level - neighborhoods, towns, or cities - can help improve local services, welcome newcomers, and develop cultural, economic and political capital.

Civic crowdfunding is the beginning of a new type of participatory democracy for communities.""Civic crowdfunding is a triumph of individualism over the collective good.""Civic crowdfunding is the result of a crisis in government."

These three divergent intepretations are among the most common responses to civic crowdfunding. I hear them in one form or another almost every time I give a talk on the topic. Despite their differences, these interpretations are also, for the moment, coexisting quite happily. Platforms and the people who use them don't show much need to agree on what civic crowdfunding is for, or what kind of future its rise might foreshadow.

I just returned from a fascinating week in Belo Horizonte (Brazil)! The trip was organized by the Office of Strategic Priorities (@escritorio_gov) of the State of Minas Gerais (they are members of the MIT Media Lab). The Escritorio joined the Media Lab to think harder about fostering innovation and empowering their citizens. Following those themes, we worked together and planned an agenda that focused on four main activities:

During my last trip to San Francisco, I heard about Marc Roth’s unconventional but sensible use of assistance money when he was homeless: He bought a membership to an SF makerspace. Marc learned the ins and outs of digital fabrication, started a successful laser cutting business, and now he’s ready to pilot The Learning Shelter, a 90-day residency program for SF homeless to build marketable making skills.

I’m enthralled. I’ve been exploring the future of work at MIT. This has looked mostly like peer economy research, but I have also been thinking about how other workforce development models may not fit today’s circumstances. Cities have traditionally approached workforce development from one of two perspectives:

Today's guest is Jon Rubin, who teaches contextual practice for socially and contextually engaged art at Carnegie Mellon. This is a live blog by Rahul Bhargava, Catherine D'Ignazio, and others - don't be surprised by typos or inconsistent tone!

Conflict Kitchen came out of what they don't have in Pittsburgh. They've never sent out a press release, but coverage has never stopped (AP, A Jazeera). Jon shows us an al Jazeera clip about Conflict Kitchen to introduce the project:

Park Quality: Why we should care, not only about the quantity of parks, but QUALITY of parks in our neighborhoods

According to the Trust for Public Land (TPL), a non-profit that works on land conservation in the US, parks are known to reduce crime, revitalize local economies, increase physical activity, and in turn bring communities together. How many times have we heard this sort of phrase before? Not that it isn’t true… but it doesn’t matter how many parks your neighborhood has, if people don’t want to use the parks.

It's been a pleasure to spend the past few weeks in Kansas City learning more about how non-profit organizations are using crowdfunding in their work, and are shaping how communities understand what crowdfunding represents and what goals it can help them achieve.

Today in Kansas City I hosted Fund Camp, a workshop for non-profits on what civic crowdfunding is, how to decide whether it's the right path for a project and how to do it effectively. It's a format I've been working on for the past year, informed by my research and the issues and challenges I've seen arise across many civic projects.

The radio silence is over; the last time I posted specifically for the Civic blog was fall 2013. I'm not continuing onto a Ph.D. after June, so before I leave my post as an academic who researches the peer economy, I'm going to report what I'm seeing and sensing as I see and sense it.

20-20! Get it?! This will also be the last semester of bad puns.

To keep myself accountable, here's a smattering of what I'll dive into this semester: